Worldfund Launches Worldfund Mexico in Mexico City
February 2009
Worldfund recently launched its Mexican branch, Worldfund México, at the Club de Industriales in Mexico City. Worldfund celebrated this opening with the Mexican members of its Board of Directors -- Claudio X. González Guajardo, Carlos Labarthe, Edmundo Vallejo, Luís Velasco and Fr. Luís Garza Medina. Mexican members of Worldfund's Education Leadership Council include Claudio X. González Laporte, Dionisio Garza Medina, Eugenio Garza and Carlos Bremer. The evening was a great success, with some 100 people in attendance, including Mexico's Subsecretary of Education.
Scroll down to read Worldfund Founder and President Luanne Zurlo's comments at the launch, and for links to press coverage.
Luanne Zurlo Remarks at Worldfund Mexico Inauguration
Monday, 16 February 2009
Club de Industriales, Mexico City
Good evening. Thank you for taking the time and fighting Mexico City traffic to be here tonight.
My grandparents and great-grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Italy and Germany some 100 years ago, receiving only a formal education through elementary school. They worked extremely hard as laborers to educate my parents who, in turn, were able to provide me with the best education in the world at America´s best high school and universities. The first nine years of my education were in the public system, which prepared me very well for superior education.
Because of my education, I was able to embark upon and flourish in a 10 year career on Wall Street, mostly working with private and public companies from all over Latin America, including Mexico. This experience opened my eyes to the very poor level of education achieved by most Mexican citizens.
Because of my education, I was able to found an organization, Worldfund, whose mission is to raise the quality of education throughout Latin America, with a particular focus on Mexico and Brazil.
Because of my education, I am standing here tonight speaking with you.
Because of your education, you are here tonight listening and, hopefully, speaking with me and others at Worldfund.
How are you and I different from the millions of Mexican children receiving such a poor quality education that they will never be able to secure a job which would allow them to live in dignity and support a family?
When asked why he was giving away most of his wealth to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Warren Buffet said he "won the genetic lottery", being born into a family and a country which could provide him the necessary education to thrive and, in his case, make lots of money. Most people on this planet, including many U.S. Americans, and the majority of Mexicans, are born into families living in circumstances which prevent these children from achieving their God-giving potential. You and I won the lottery of life, too.
I consider the top quality education I received to be one of the three most important gifts that I have received in this life (in addition to my family/friends and my faith), and I believe I have an obligation to try to return this gift to others in some small way. For me, "others" are Latin Americans, because Latin America was so good to me professionally and socially.
It is obvious from your presence here tonight that you, too, have taken on the task of trying to provide the gift of education to others.
I have seen an important change in attitudes in Mexico over the past 6 years, since the foundation of Worldfund, such that education has become one of the top issues of public (and private) discourse. This, alone, is major progress. A public problem cannot be fixed unless there is broad-based agreement that there is a problem. I think it is fair to say most Mexicans, today, know there is a critical education problem that must be addressed if Mexico doesn´t want to see itself continue to fall behind other parts of the world, namely Asia. (I should add U.S. Americans are also grappling with this issue, so this comment is not meant to be pointing fingers.)
All of us in this room tonight know how poor the quality of education is here in Mexico, so I won´t elaborate.
What I want to focus on is SOLUTIONS, with an "S", because there is no one solution, or only one actor who can solve the problem. We all have a critical role to play because the challenge of raising the quality of education that most Mexicans receive is much more difficult than merely providing access to a school classroom. Raising educational quality is a multi-faceted, long-term challenge: it requires changing how schools operate, it requires changing how parents interact with their childrens´ schools; and, I would contend, most importantly, it requires changing what happens inside the classroom. The interaction between teacher and student is KEY.
So, you must be wondering what exactly is Worldfund doing for education in Mexico?
Worldfund is a 6 year old NGO, headquartered in NYC, with an international board, which includes a few key members who are here tonight: Claudio X. Gonzalez, Carlos Labarthe, Luis Velasco, Edmundo Vallejo, and Eduardo Vidal.
The reason for our gathering this evening is to announce and celebrate the inauguration of Worldfund Mexico. We are fully registered as a Mexican NGO, headed by Elena Espinosa. Worldfund is also fully registered in Brazil as Worldfund Brasil and our director there is an ex-Embraer executive named Luiz Sergio Cardoso de Oliveira. Our board of directors decided that for Worldfund to truly make an impact on educational quality in Mexico and Brazil, we needed to have a more direct local presence. I am humbled and thankful that Mexico has welcomed us in the warm-hearted way that is so unique to Mexicans!
Worldfund does two things:
- (1) Worldfund provides financing to top quality private schools that are providing an excellent education to poor children. These schools receive no government funding and are in need of Capex financing and working capital funding to cover the subsidized tuition costs of its students. We support select private schools serving the poor because they are doing what ALL schools should be doing and we hope they will serve as a positive model to the public school counterparts in their communities. The director of one of our partner schools, Mano Amiga Chalco, Lilia Garelli is here tonight, and makes great efforts to work with the public schools in Chalco. Lilia´s school boasts 90%-plus high school graduation rates and a large number of her graduates go on to university, despite coming from very difficult circumstances.
- (2) Worldfund develops, manages, and scales innovative programs that raise the quality of teaching in public schools. We bring key partners together to launch these programs, often utilizing educational techniques that have been proven successful in the U.S. or other parts of Latin America.
Let me give you a few concrete examples. About three years ago, the Worldfund staff and board decided it wanted to directly impact Mexican public schools in a transparent and accountable way. We also wanted to raise the quality of teaching, making it more inter-active and less rote-like. Finally, as an American-headquartered organization, we wanted to help Secretaria de Educacion Publica (SEP) in its efforts to improve the teaching of English in Mexico´s public schools.
So what did we do? Worldfund approached Dartmouth College, one of the best universities in the U.S. with a highly respected and very practical pedagogy for teaching foreign languages, Fundacion Televisa, with extensive experience working effectively with public school teachers in Mexico, and Nextel Mexico, which was seeking to finance an educational initiative that improved public school performance. We joined together to launch a program called IAPE (Inter-American Partnership for Education), under the direct leadership of Worldfund´s Jim Citron, which provides very intensive mid-career training to teachers throughout Mexico.
IAPE has worked closely with Silvia Ortega, UPN Director, SEP officials here in DF and throughout Mexico. Thanks to SEP Jalisco, IAPE will double the size of its program this year by hosting a Jalisco-based IAPE program next month. IAPE has been selected as a Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) program in 2007 and this four minute video we are about to see was featured at the CGI meetings in NYC this past September. **PLAY VIDEO**
A second example is an arts literacy program that Worldfund launched this past fall, called Cartenera. Last year, Worldfund approached some professors at Harvard University -- who had developed, with educators and artists from Argentina and Peru, a program to increase literacy through the arts -- to train teachers at Mano Amiga Chalco, and local artists, to deliver this afterschool program, under the guidance of Lilia Garelli. The program has been a huge success: participating students are reading more and performing better in their other classes.
A third example is our new principal training program, called Instituto para la Formacion de Calidad Educativa (IFCE), which will be launched in March in Veracruz. How did this program come about? Once we started working with Mexican teachers, we quickly realized that the principals with whom our teachers work were in great need of practical training as well. We believe the single most important success driver of a school is the quality of its principal and, yet, like in the U.S., there is a lack of top quality training programs for school principals in Mexico. The objective of this program is to provide hands-on, practical human, managerial and pedagogical training for public school principals with the goal of improving student performance.
As with our IAPE program, we are working with both local and international partners, Exelduc, who developed the program content, TAMSA, who is playing a very active role improving public schools in Veracruz, where we will launch the first pilot, the SEP of Veracruz, which is helping us identify participating principals and is donating the beautiful facility where the program will be held, and NLNS, a U.S.-based NGO which is sharing with us critical lessons that they learned working with American public school principals.
Finally, I mention that we are also launching an intensive, after-school science/math program for high school youth in Brazil this August, working with AED, a DC-based NGO, Brazilian education officials, and Brazilian-based corporates. Assuming this pilot goes well, we would like to bring this program to Mexico, because like Brazil, Mexico is in dire need of better science and math training to encourage more students to study engineering sciences.
There are three animating themes to Worldfund's activities:
- (1) We take a vertical rather than horizontal approach to improving education levels, meaning we are in the ‘business' of transforming lives. Our programs are intensive and hands-on. In number terms, we want to bring the students, teachers and principals we touch from a 1 to an 8 or 10. There are many programs that reach many more people, raising levles from a 1 to a 4, let's say. Both strategies are absolutely necessary. While we will not be able to impact as many lives as a horizontal program strategy, our goal is that our programs will have a powerful ripple effect and provide a model to others.
- (2) Our programs emphasize practice over theory and instill life values and skills that will enable our students to thrive in today's global economy.
- (3) We cannot work alone. Each of our programs work with other NGOs, private sector companies and public sector education officials, as each brings something unique and critical to the table, whether it be a specific skill set, critical working relationships or resources.
It is by no accident that this room is filled with representatives from the NGO, public and private sectors. What we say to those NGOs that are already working with Worldfund, thank you. Some of the NGO professionals I have worked with here in Mexico are the best I have ever seen, compared to Wall Street too! To those in the public sector, we do not want to tell you what to do or to do your jobs. We just want to help where we can, as the job of educating Mexican citizens to compete in the 21st century is too challenging for one organization and one mind-set to do well. Great ideas that originate from the private or NGO sectors require the public sector platform to multiply these ideas across the country. Finally, to the private sector, you play a critical role in educating Mexico's youth, as your fortunes are tied to the success of Mexican's education efforts.
1+1+1 doesn't equal three. If added properly, 1+1+1 equals infinity.
Last but not least I want to thank Francisco Espinosa, from Burston-Marseller, who has generously donated their PR services to Worldfund, David Brill and his staff from Goodrich Riquelme law firm, who diligently worked to get Worldfund registered in Mexico, all on a pro bono basis, and Tavistock Group, who is donating their accounting services to Worldfund pro bono. Worldfund takes great pride in its financial and legal transparency, but this can also be very expensive. Thanks to these three firms, Worldfund is saving approximately US$50K this year, all which will now go directly to our Mexican program efforts.
Thank you.
Press Coverage of Worldfund Mexico Launch
One-Digital: "Inauguracion de Worldfund Mexico" February 17, 2009
Agencia Informativa de Anunciación: "Presentan Worldfund México para apoyar a la educación en México" February 17, 2009
Sentido Común: "Worldfund inaugura oficinas en México para actividades a favor de la educación" February 17, 2009
El Universal: "SEP y magisterio retoman negociación por alianza educativa" February 17, 2009
Invertia: "Inauguran Worldfund México para apoyar a la educación en México" February 17, 2009
